North County Times November 19, 2010
MILITARY: Marine Corps sending tanks to Helmand for the first time
By Mark Walker
Vowing to keep the pressure on the Taliban insurgency, the U.S. Marine Corps said Friday it is sending tanks to Afghanistan for the first time in the war, which is now in its 10th year.
"Tanks provide us with a deadly accurate weapon system that can be used very effectively against the enemy, even as he tries to use the Afghan people as his shield," Camp Pendleton's Maj. Gen. Richard Mills said in a statement released by the Pentagon. Mills commands the 20,000 Marines fighting in Afghanistan.
"The superior optics provided by the tanks give us one more tool to take away the night from the enemy. He can't use the darkness to lay his IEDs that cause so many casualties among our forces and the civilian population."
Defense officials said 14 M1-A1 Abrams tanks and 115 Marines will be deployed next month. The tanks will probably deploy from Camp Pendleton, according to two military sources who declined to be named because they were not authorized to release that information.
Canadians and Danish troops have used tanks in Afghanistan, but this is a first for U.S. forces and is seen as a logical move by Rand Corp. military analyst David Johnson. The retired Army colonel who specializes in military doctrine said the Marines won't be using the heavily armored vehicles in the same way the Russians did during their failed 1979-89 war against the mujahedeen in Afghanistan.
"The Russians used them as part of large armored units in sweeping-type actions," Johnson said during a telephone interview from Rand's offices in Washington. "This is more in line with supporting the Marines on the ground conducting foot patrols."
The nearly 70-ton M1-A1 Abrams tank features a 120mm main gun and carries a four-man crew. The crew consists of a commander, a gunner, a loader and a driver.
The tanks can fire 120mm shells about 4,000 yards and can keep watch over ground forces from a rear position, he said.
"These tanks are very precise with the shells they fire, and they're also rocket-propelled-grenade-proof," he said, adding they also can withstand all but extremely large roadside bombs.
In a statement released Friday, Marine Corps officials say the tanks will help isolate insurgent forces and "project power into insurgent safe havens."
The superior optics, maneuverability and precision firepower of the M1-A1 Abrams also are expected to be helpful to forces operating in contested areas.
"The tracked capability of tanks enables a swift mobile force that can close off escape routes, deter, disrupt or pursue insurgent forces in terrain that might otherwise be unmanageable," according to the Marine Corps statement.
The Marine Corps did use tanks in the volatile Anbar province of Iraq during the height of that war.
By sending a small number of tanks to Afghanistan, the Marine Corps does not appear to be placing a heavy reliance on them.
Commanders plan extensive coordination with Afghan villagers, elders and local authorities before the first tanks arrive.
John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense monitoring group in Washington, said tanks do present a "community interface" issue.
"It's a mighty big, mean, fighting machine and it's certainly not going to be used to pass out candy to kids," he said during a telephone interview. "Tanks also have a tendency to run over people's crops."
The deployment underscores Mills' vow to press the fight through the winter months, which have traditionally been a time of decreased clashes because of the intense cold that descends over the country.
"It says to me they are putting the pedal to the metal," Pike said. "They are going to try to do whatever they can over the next six months."
Marines from Camp Pendleton's 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment are concentrating on the Sangin area, where Mills said the Taliban has its last large concentration of forces in the Helmand province. The area also is considered a production center for illicit drugs as well as roadside bombs.
Because they maneuver by track and not wheel, the tanks can more easily traverse the rugged terrain, according to Mills.
"This ranges from dense vegetation along the rivers to expansive desert terrain to the south," he said. "The mobility of the tanks gives us an ideal platform to interdict the insurgents' drugs as they flow south and his fighters, supplies and weapons as they go north."
He also said the tanks are not a signal his forces are desperate.
"Tanks are hardly a weapon of desperation, but simply another tool to wage (counterinsurgency) in an effective way that will save Afghan and coalition lives."
Mills' request to bring tanks to Helmand was approved by Gen. David Petraeus, the overall commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, who heads U.S. Central Command.
© Copyright 2010, North County Times - Californian
